


Phagophobia

by CarlyChameleon



Series: Dysthanasia [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood, Blood and Violence, Chases, Escape, Guns, Human/Vampire Relationship, Kidnapping, Knives, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Monsters, Near Future, Non-Consensual Blood Drinking, Obsession, Original Fiction, Original Universe, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Violence, Secrets, Supernatural Elements, Survival, Swearing, Trauma, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:14:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24724378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarlyChameleon/pseuds/CarlyChameleon
Summary: Agent Isaac Soto becomes both hunter and hunted.
Relationships: Male Vampire/Male Victim, Vampire/Human - Relationship
Series: Dysthanasia [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1787590
Comments: 14
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I finally, FINALLY, got around to starting a sequel to "Dysthanasia" up after over a year. Quite a few ideas came to me while thinking about this story, including the end goal, so we may be following Isaac around for several parts of varying lengths. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who read the first part (which will eventually undergo some editing to add some relevant content here and there), and especially ItsPineTime for suggesting the idea in the first place during Chocolate Box. I hope you all find this second installment as enjoyable, if not moreso, as it grows.

Isaac arrived at the pier jutting out from Sin Strip Beach twenty minutes ahead of the sun. The surfers, though, had beaten them both by at least two hours. About a dozen gamboled in the foaming waves, sleek and nimble as selkies. The cold wind that lifted the water and tangled up Isaac’s curls brought them only joy. They lived for nothing but catching the next swell. The clouds amassing on the horizon behind them, bellies sherbet-pink and -orange, heads dark and brooding with rain, could be dealt with later. What did they care if the start of the brutal storm season kept commercial flights across the States grounded for months? They could just hide until the threat passed them by. It wouldn’t chase them wherever they went. It didn’t want to drain their lives little by little and eventually sink its teeth into their throats. They had all the time in the world to paddle around and play.

He knew it wasn’t fair, but Isaac hated every last surfer below. Just a little, just for a second. Not enough to wish any real mishap on them. More like wiping out on one of the steel girders hidden by the high tide maybe. Or snapping their boards as they rammed into the remains of a glitzy sign that used to mark the once mighty hotel-casinos drowned beneath. At least then his misery would have some company.

“Hard to believe life just goes on, huh?”

Glancing right, he saw Sergeant Curry had decided to stretch his long legs too after being cramped in the backseat of the car for five hours. Isaac shrugged to loosen the tension where the old scars crisscrossed his shoulder blades as much as to reply. “Harder to believe I could’ve died the night before. Feels like a bad dream already.”

“Know what you mean. The brain’s great at rewriting reality. Guess it works out, in the end. We’d all be batshit wrecks if it didn’t sweep the scary shit under a rug.”

They stood in silent agreement over that for a minute or two. The ocean reared and charged forward in a perfect wave that most of the surfers, whooping and cheering, rode nearly to the rocky shore. They leapt from their boards seconds before the water slammed into the ragged edges of the land with a force that reverberated up through the pylons of the pier.

“You ever kill a bloodborn?” he asked when the roar of the sea subsided.

“Two.”

“At the same time?”

“Shit no. Separate cases. And we caught the first fucker by surprise.”

“How tough was it to kill the other one?”

Though Isaac didn’t turn his gaze from the water, he heard the planks of the pier creak as Curry shifted restlessly. “We’ll get you back to HQ in one piece, Soto.”

“I need to know my odds, not have my fucking hand held.” Sucking in a deep breath of stinging salt air, he waited a beat for his emotions to simmer back down. None of this was the sergeant or Corporal Yi’s fault. “Look, I’ve been with the Coven as long as you. My department doesn’t fight, but I’ve read enough reports and heard enough stories to know what can happen to humans who cross the wrong bloodborn’s path. If I can help you keep me alive, tell me how.”

Black caterpillar brows pinched together, Curry scratched his scruffy goatee. “Okay. Yeah. Can’t knock you for that.

“Here’s the thing. People talk a lot of shit about bloodborn being toward the bottom of the monster food chain. If we’re talking raw power, that scans, sure. But they got something other beasties don’t that makes them way more dangerous when you look at the big picture.

“Most spooky shit follows a script. You learn its habits, the rules it has to follow, you got something like a poltergeist or faerie by the scruff. Bloodborn, though? They’re free to make it up as they go along. Yeah, they have weaknesses—sunlight, stakes, fire—but other than that they’re totally unpredictable. What they don’t have in supernatural stats they make up for with influence and ingenuity. They blend in. They network. They buy the right connections. They know how to navigate human society and keep us running in circles because they _were_ human. I’ll take clearing out a den of ghouls or tracking a werecreature any day. Those are simple and direct.”

Despite his thick fleece jacket, Curry chaffed his arms. “The first bloodborn I helped take out was young. Newly minted pretty much. Didn’t have the time to get too crafty. The second was that one’s maker. Assassinated and destroyed the lives of five people on my squad—over half of us—before we finally put her down. Bitch wasn’t even part of a brood. Probably wouldn’t be standing here if she had been.”

Isaac took a minute to let his own personal account compare itself to the sergeant’s. “What’s your assessment on this bloodborn?”

The way the corners of Curry’s eyes tightened answered long before his words. “The fact this thing isn’t on file with us makes my trigger finger twitch. If he was made around the time the world was losing its collective shit, then okay, maybe any info we’d had went missing along with a significant part of the continent.” He tilted his prickly chin at the submerged skeleton of the city for emphasis. “Not sure how he could have gone the next hundred plus years without being noticed, but I guess it’s possible. Maybe he just kept to himself and lived by sipping instead of chomping people. In any case, that’s not what’s giving me gray hairs.”

“It’s the magic he had access to.” Isaac didn’t need to turn it into a question. The thought had lurked in the back of his skull since he’d encountered the putrid constructs of ectoplasm guarding the escape routes of the townhome he’d been trapped in. As soon as immediate survival had given up a fraction of space in his conscious mind it had elbowed its way up front to remind him just how far from safe he still was.

Curry shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and hunched his big, bony shoulders. “Yeah, the magic. On their own, the other facts don’t paint such a bad picture. This bloodborn of yours—”

“He isn’t mine.”

“—could’ve been a newer member of any criminal brood with a fresh scam going. But the stuff you described…that’s some Ursula Von Trier level shit. It’s the kind of thing that gets paid for with more than just duffel bags stuffed with cash.”

At the mention of the world’s most dangerous mage, Isaac’s nerves squirmed beneath his skin. Having the renegade necromancer involved would’ve sharpened the sword of doom hanging over him to an edge approaching vorpal.

“Can we beat him?”

Curry’s pause lasted long enough to lend a credible weight to his reply. “With everyone working together, yeah. It’s messed up, but him wanting to drag the hunt out ups our chances. He won’t seriously try to kill you until he either gets bored or desperate. Which is why we’re going to give him the good time he wants.”

Huddling in his jacket didn’t ward off the shudder that rode down Isaac’s spine. While playing the part of bait wouldn’t have been his first choice of role in Director Khang and the enforcer team’s plan, he saw the sense in it. The same went for the merry fifteen-hundred mile chase they meant to lead Renato Faria Dimas, unregistered bloodborn, on. The balance of enticement and narrow escape had to be tipped at precisely the right points along the way if they were going to keep him distracted enough to never suspect the ambush waiting for him at the end, five hundred miles outside HQ in Confluence, Ohio. And, more important, not land Isaac in a fatal dinner date with him. Like funerals, avenging someone was a nice gesture, but it did more good for the living than the dead.

At a nudge to his shoulder, Isaac glanced over at Curry still looming beside him. The sergeant jerked his head in the direction of the parking lot.

“C’mon. Pretty sure Yi’s picked us out a motel by now. First rule when hunting bloodborn: Sleep all day, save the paranoia for night.”

Isaac squinted into the sun, half-swallowed by the coming stormclouds now, as long as he could stand it before turning away. “Sounds like good advice.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's more off the grid than bloodborn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a chapter so much as the next scene, but I figure I might as well post something when I got it and keep some momentum going. 
> 
> I'm not terribly concerned with grammatical corrections at this time (this is all first draft garbage), but feel free to point out plot holes, share thoughts on characters, ask questions, call out crappy tropes, and other major framework issues. Basically, anything that might help make the second draft better. Or simply read. I appreciate both.

Sensible plan or no, Isaac laid awake in one of the two motel beds, back-to-back with Curry, for over an hour before accepting that the Sandman had stood him up. The hybrid foam of the mattress muffled his movements as he slipped out of the starched, scratchy sheets. Perched on the bed’s edge for a minute, he studied the room’s blandly functional décor. Nothing touched by a sense of the personal. Someone could die of a stroke, overdose, eat the end of a pistol and all traces of them would disappear. Be discarded and scrubbed away in time for the next anonymous occupant to take their place. There wasn’t even enough history or character for a ghost to tether to.

Just like the townhouse he’d escaped from. Had been _allowed_ to escape from. Isaac’s stomach rolled over like a dead fish, bloated with nausea. Bending in half, he rested his clammy forehead on his knees until he was sure he wouldn’t either burst into tears or copious vomiting. Once the bout passed, he wobbled to his feet. Shuffling across the carpet in his socks generated enough of a charge to spark a nasty shock when he reached for the top drawer of the desk across from the beds. Isaac cursed under his breath, shook his tingling fingers out, and tried again. The drawer slid out silently. Inside lay what he wanted: an eight by eleven magpad. No question whether it worked—it still bore a drawing of a huge dick left by some artistic soul who’d passed that way before. Smiling to find a stamp of humanity on the place at last, Isaac picked the magpad up and flicked the erase tab on its side. The virile imagery vanished, leaving a clean rectangle of gray to work with. Isaac slid into the desk chair, took the steel stylus in hand, and began to exorcise the thoughts haunting him in the only way he knew how.

**Name/Alias: Dimas, Renato F**

**Type: Bloodborn (unregistered)**

**Age: 100+ estimated**

**Pronouns: Not stated**

**Height: 5’ 8” estimated**

**Weight: 150 lbs estimated**

**Hair: Brown**

**Eyes:**

Little spikes of magnetic dust radiated around the point of the suddenly still stylus. How could he articulate the awful fascination that struck him when he’d met Renato Faria Dimas’s eyes? The way it had diffused through his body like a neurotoxin, paralyzing him? Their ability to reflect human emotion despite the monstrous intent lurking in the mind behind them?

After a moment of hand-wringing, Isaac decided to stay practical. He only had so much space, and anyway, he wouldn’t give the bloodborn the satisfaction of turning him poetic.

**Eyes: Blue-green**

**Maker: Unknown**

**Affiliates: Possible magic user(s), possible brood**

**Assets: Sufficient money to purchase current model of car, electronics, and maintain real estate. Possible access or knowledge of high-level sorcery. Access to drugs and medical supplies.**

**Threat Assessment: Enhanced speed + strength. Some formal training, style unknown. Claims 16 human deaths.**

The stylus summoned another tiny ring of dust while Isaac’s ethics struggled to elbow past his rage and disgust. He grimaced as, with a final jab, it won.

**Displays some capacity for reason. Violence not 1 st option, however, no show of remorse when it’s used.**

Then, because he’d earned it, and the emotional poison needed to be drained:

**Notes: Smug asshole. I’d love to shoot the stupid, bland smile off your face. Why me? You knew I was Coven but you came after me anyway. Do I look that weak? Or do you think you’re that untouchable? I guess so if you let me get away and call for help. What the fuck is your glitch? Are you getting off on having power over life and death? You can’t seriously think you can take the entire Coven on. I take that back. You probably are that delusional. You ruined my life and I hate you. I hope I get to watch you being staked.**

Head empty and quiet at last, Isaac shivered and slumped in the desk chair, suddenly exhausted. No way could he sleep in that room, though, with its affordable, impersonal furniture and bland walls. Not even with people he trusted nearby. Lurching up from the chair, he made a beeline for the door.

Desert heat wrapped around him like a security blanket despite the shade of the motel’s veranda. Everything from the unvarnished boards scratching his bare feet to the buzz of flies socializing around a puddle left by the ice machine reassured him this was real. He wasn’t dreaming. He wasn’t trapped. Squinting against the glare of the sun off windshields and chrome in the parking lot wasn’t the only reason for the tears welling in the corners of his eyes, but no one else had to know that.

Tiny tremors shivering through the veranda floorboards behind him sent a different message.

His head whipped around, pulse hard in his throat. Tina Yi showed no surprise that he’d sensed her footsteps or at his reaction. She only met his eyes for a couple of seconds before averting her own to the shimmering parking lot, running a hand over the bristles of her closely shorn hair, and clearing her throat.

“Can’t sleep?” She made it a question more as a courtesy, judging from the grim smile.

Embarrassment grabbed one corner of Isaac’s mouth, apology the other, both pulling it into a grimace. “Not in there.”

Yi nodded before tossing something at him. He made a grab, sent the object bouncing out of his palm, but managed to scoop it up on the fourth try. Not too pathetic, considering the kaleidoscopic tattoos of sacred geometry relating to speed and strength interlinked from her shoulders to her wrists. Shoulders and wrists that could bench about as much as Isaac weighed.

The car’s key fob rested in his hand when he looked down.

“With it plugged in and the panels out you should be able to run the AC without depleting the batteries,” the corporal told him. “Plus, you won’t roast. Me or Curry will check on you every hour or so.”

Relief helped wash down the lump of guilt in his throat. “Thanks, Yi.”

She shrugged. “It happens to all of us the first time we get in over our heads.” For a second, she glanced at her geometric tattoos. “You might not think so, but you did the best anyone could’ve, Soto. Survival’s like anything else. You don’t have to be the best, just good enough. And…here you are.”

This time. But Isaac made himself nod.

“Get some winks. There’s more out here off the grid than bloodborn.” She turned and went back inside the room.

Thus reassured, Isaac managed to make himself comfortable enough in the passenger’s seat of their company car, seat reclined and AC cranked up. He woke three times, the last being a need to use a bathroom rather than from amorphous nightmares. Pushing open the door, a sharp smell stabbed his nostrils. Alarmed and still functioning on dream logic, he looked at his lap. Dry and accident-free. Frowning, he took a good whiff, then coughed and pressed his sleeve to his nose, eyes watering. The smell had the bite of too much ammonia to be human. Like cat piss with oily notes of musk from a big mammal. Underneath festered just a hint of the poisoned sweetness of rotting meat. He took shallow breaths until he made it back inside the motel room.

Only after he’d concluded his own business did Isaac’s sleep-slowed brain follow the trail of breadcrumbs. He didn’t think the name—his courses on creature lore had spent most of one semester on how to avoid such things when necessary. Instead, his mind paced warily around the space where the word _should_ be, keeping it in the peripheral without confronting it directly. He’d no sooner flushed and washed his hands—not stopping to wipe them dry—than he was standing at the foot of the beds.

“Yi. Curry.”

Neither bolted upright. They rolled to a sitting position, hands on the guns holstered against their ribs, in one efficient motion. Isaac didn’t move a muscle until both started to blink, instinct waning in their eyes as humanity returned.

“What’s up, Soto?” asked the sergeant, letting his hand fall from his weapon’s safety.

“I think you’d better smell for yourselves.”

One sniff from the edge of the veranda proved enough. Curry and Yi swapped tight-lipped looks.

“Pack up. We’re out of here. Let’s hope this is a fluke and four wheels is enough to outrun four legs.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isaac, Curry, and Yi encounter strange customs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The part after this is likely to be a good deal longer, so have this tidbit in the meantime.

A storm caught them first.

They’d left the one brewing on the coast almost four hours behind—this storm hit just as they pulled into Provo, Utah. Rain streaked in at a slant, rebounding off the road as a bank of spray that obliterated all traces of traffic lanes. Isaac kept his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel and his eyes locked on the red glow of tail lights from the car ahead as they crawled down one of the wider main streets in town.

“Make a left at this intersection.” Yi had to half-shout from the backseat over the _fortissimo_ drumming of water against the hood and roof.

Sheet lightning brought enough contrast to the gray world for Isaac to find the turning lane; the crash of thunder rattled the windows as they made their way down the cross street. Another minute and a right turn saw them safely parked outside a diner. The sprint from car to entrance soaked the bottom hems of their pants and hoods of their coats. They wiped their feet on the mat inside the front door as best they could.

“Hi there! Glad to see you made it inside in one piece. Table for three?”

Their heads snapped up in unison. The smile of the person—the actual human being—standing behind a podium nearby slipped from welcoming cheer to fight-or-flight for a second. Isaac’s stare darted around to the tables, half of them occupied. No signs of touch tabs. No kiosks anywhere to input their orders either. His heart sank like a deflating balloon. Just his luck that after years of traveling back and forth across the country he’d finally run into one of _these_ places now.

“Uh…sure,” answered Yi, recovering first and pushing her hood back. “Three of us.”

Training in ancient, long-dead arts reasserting itself, the…greeter? historical reenactor? indentured servant?...beamed and pulled a matching number of physical menus from a stack beside the podium. “Right this way.”

The squishing of Isaac’s sneakers made the march all the more awkward. He was ready to breathe a sigh of relief when they were shown to a corner booth with a great view of the municipal trees along the sidewalks being bullied by the storm. Menus were handed out. Yet the ordeal was far from over.

“What can I get you all to drink?”

He exchanged harrowed stares with Curry. Yi swooped in to the rescue once again.

“Three ice waters would be fine, thanks.”

Their strange companion regarded them with raised and artistically painted-on eyebrows for several seconds. In that brief window of time, reality righted itself. They were strangers sizing each other up. Equals. Then the artificial smile and sense of being trapped in a horror stream episode returned. “Okay! Someone will be right out with that.”

Isaac didn’t dare breathe until they were alone again. He took on the solemn duty of saying what everyone was thinking. “That was weird as fuck.”

“I know, right?” Curry shook his head. “I’ve heard about places that still do this sort of thing, but I kinda thought they were an urban legend. You know, just something else to razz people off the grid about.”

“It’s like this everywhere back home,” Yi admitted with a grimace.

He let out a long, low whistle. “You’re shitting me.”

“Wish I was. Eating out somewhere is a whole formal production down in the Floodlands. My mom only broke out her jewelry for weddings, funerals, and the buffet.”

A shudder ran through Isaac. “Remind me to pack a suitcase full of sandwiches if I ever get sent on assignment that way.”

“Eh, honestly, the barbeque makes up for the creepy, forced social interaction most of the time. I hear the hosts and servers make stacks putting up with customers. Couldn’t pay me enough, though. Give me monsters any day. Way easier to handle. Speaking of monsters and assignments—”

A warning hiss from Curry cut her off. They fell silent as a new person, presumably their official server, arrived with the waters. Yi, knowing what was coming, beat him to the draw just as his smiling mouth opened.

“We still need a few minutes to decide, thanks.”

They were left in peace without comment.

“As I was saying…what did Khang have you doing out on the coast this time of year anyway, Soto?”

It was bound to come up sooner or later on such a long trip, he supposed, but he’d been holding onto the hope that the director had already filled them in. Or both enforcers just wouldn’t care about a research job. “Just following up on a couple of alleged sightings.” Taking a sip from his glass, Isaac hoped that answer would satisfy.

“Sightings of what?”

No use dancing around it. He sighed. “Mermaids.”

Curry and Yi did him the favor of not breaking down into laughter, but they couldn’t hold back grins.

“Khang doesn’t usually send researchers off to chase fairy tales,” Curry said in the spirit of generosity. “Must’ve been a hell of a sighting.”

“Well, that’s the thing. The reports came from two local weresharks.”

That wiped away their smiles.

“Holy shit…that’s not the same as some tinfoil hat ranting about UFOs, Soto,” said Yi.

“I know, but…come on. Merpeople? The Coven’s been around since, like, the eleventh century and not one solid report.”

“Did you talk to the sharks?”

“I was set to meet up with Larry Hart, then, you know, all this other shit happened.” Yet another aspect of his life tainted by Renato Faria Dimas.

“I’ve worked with Larry before. Likes to hear himself talk, but he’s not respected in the loop just ‘cause he can turn into a giant killer fish. Was he arranging an interview between you and the others?”

“He was one of the witnesses that gave a statement.”

Curry folded his hands behind his head and sat back in the booth, eyes huge and wondering. “Mermaids. Fuck me sideways.” Gaze sharpening, it swiped over to Isaac. “You still got those statements?”

“Well, yeah, stored in my messages, sure.” Basking in unexpected interest made his feet just slightly less frozen and his spine just a bit straighter. “But I don’t have a tab anymore.”

“Here, use mine. We can pick you up a new one when we hit Denver tomorrow.”

Accepting the sergeant’s device, Isaac tapped it into the diner’s network. His jaw dropped at the first ping to pop up after connecting.

“Shit! They have online ordering here.”

“Finally,” sighed Yi. “It’s about time we caught a break.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caution: Winding roads ahead.

The rain let up a couple of hours after they’d left the diner, but the winds driving the flocks of storm clouds across the evening sky kept up the spirit of the season. Every time they left the shelter of an eroding rock canyon, Curry had to compensate at the wheel for the car being pushed off course. Between that and possibly being crushed beneath a landslide, the night was shaping up to be a fun one.

“No sign of either of our potential tails,” Isaac said from the backseat, frowning at the message on Yi’s tab. “Khang said he might have us hang around Denver for a day or two. See if either shows themselves.”

“I doubt our smelly scent-marking friend would follow us this far northeast.” Curry didn’t try to hide the relief in his voice.

“Their range’s been growing ever since the Break,” countered Yi, reaching behind the passenger’s seat to take her tab back. “This one might find pushing a little farther worth it just for a taste of Coven blood.”

Isaac scrubbed a hand over his face, day’s worth of stubble rasping against his palm. It was hard, sometimes, working for such a popular organization. “Ever hear of one attacking a bloodborn?”

“Nope, but there’s a first time for everything. Those fucking things are pure evil by all accounts. I doubt they’d hesitate if another predator got in their way.”

A fate more grisly than even R. F. Dimas deserved maybe, but if it finally sutured the gaping hole in Isaac’s sense of security shut he wasn’t about to shed any tears. “Who’s Khang got waiting in Denver?”

“Hasn’t said yet, but Watts is a safe bet. He’s taken lead on most of the calls for bloodborn the past few years.”

Curry flashed her a grin in the rearview mirror. “Ever since the Olympia incident, right?”

The glare of impending doom she shot back was definitely closer than it appeared. “Never going to hear the end of that one, are we?”

Gaze bouncing between both enforcers, Isaac weighed keeping the peace against his curiosity. “What happened in Olympia?”

Sighing in disgust, Yi slouched in her seat. “Desmond Walsh’s brood happened.”

“Wait…I thought you specialized in magic users?”

“I _do._ I was part of a raid on a cabal of so-called sorcerers at the time. They were really more just a club of smug assholes who’d gotten their greedy mitts on a couple of bona fide grimoires. Had no idea the Coven even existed, apparently. Thought they were the next Obsidian Court and could do whatever they saw fit since they’d figured out a few spells. The usual—my department sees their type all the time.

“A dozen of us, with Watts in command, had the big house they met up in every month surrounded, ready to take these losers down. Except we weren’t the only ones after their hides that night, as it turns out. Walsh had already given them warnings about being on his turf without paying him proper dues, drawing unwanted attention, et cetera. True to form, they told him to go piss up a rope. So, he sent the biggest bullies in his employ to their hangout spot to make an example of them. Unfortunately, me and eleven other veteran enforcers had front row seats to the event.”

“Did you try to stop them?”

Yi twisted around in her seat to pin him with a look that made him deflate into his own. “Hell no, we didn’t. We weren’t equipped for bloodborn, let alone the likes of Benjamin Zevbrowski or Theodore Dalton and friends. So, we let scum turn on scum. When the dust settled, we did a sweep for the grimoires and any other items too dangerous for the mundane authorities to deal with. Walsh’s lackeys had redone the whole place in red. Bit some necks so deep the heads were half off. Ripped the rest limb from limb or used blunt force trauma. They also took the books we were after, the bastards. Now, Watts and the rest of us who were there get sent out when there’s a call about bloodborn to learn how to handle them. And jerks in other departments—” she hiked a thumb in Curry’s direction “—make sure we never forget it.”

“Oh.” Somehow, Isaac managed to break even on his shame and satisfied curiosity levels. “I, uh, just thought you’d been assigned because of the magic involved where I was…because of the magic I saw.”

She turned her fearsome stare back toward the front. “That’s probably part of it. You said it was like ectoplasm? Oozed out of the door?”

“And the backyard fence.”

Headlights coming up behind them hid Yi’s expression in the mirror. “In theory, that sort of working can be done by anyone. All they’d need to know is the right ingredients and steps. It’s basically like making gelatin—just boiling down a bunch of bones and skin.”

“Right. Only from humans.”

“Sometimes. Depends how complex the intent being put into the goo is, at least according to popular opinion. Some casters swear a bone sending from pig and cow parts can carry out tasks just as well as one made by old-fashioned graverobbing.”

“Any broods famous for using this kind of thing?”

She coughed up a mirthless laugh. “There aren’t any bloodborn moonlighting as sorcerers running around that we know of, if that’s what you mean. Say what you want about unregistereds and the rest who think they’re too good for Coven law, but they believe in solidarity. The broods leave the mystic arts alone pretty much, contracting shady practitioners and providing them with the more gruesome spell components instead. In return, the left-handed community gives them VIP treatment and goes out of their way to make sure business keeps on as usual.”

“Any ideas who might be helping them down south?”

“Too damn many, Soto. Without any distinct style to the spell or knowing how it was cast, there’s no way to narrow down any leads.”

They still knew diddly about Renato Faria Dimas, in other words. Isaac readjusted his seatbelt where it crossed near his neck, uneasy thoughts stirring in the depths. Bloodborn weren’t solitary creatures. Just like when they were human, they sought safety and comfort in others of their kind. So where were the rest of this one’s hunting club? He couldn’t accept there was no brood influence along that part of the coast—a cozy residential killing ground said otherwise. Renato had to be tied to _someone,_ to _somewhere._ Surviving the aftermath of the Break wouldn’t have been possible without resources or support.

“What’s this asshole’s glitch?”

Isaac emerged from the rabbit hole of his thoughts to find light glaring into the car. He twisted around, peering through the back window. The car behind was bearing down on them like a cheetah on a lame gazelle. Given the interstate had dwindled to two lanes in the canyons, Curry did the smart thing and drifted toward the shoulder of the road, cursing all people in a big damn hurry to get nowhere.

It didn’t lessen the impact of whatever crashed directly into the passenger’s side one bit.

Isaac’s whole body cracked like a whip, arm and hip slamming against the door, head ricocheting off the window. The world went black before adrenaline slapped him conscious again a second or two later. He blinked down at himself. At the air bags filling the space between him, the door, and the back of Curry’s seat. Jerky as an automaton, Isaac touched the side of his skull. His quaking fingers came away with no blood. No brain matter. Okay. Okay, he was okay. The bags had prevented him from actually hitting the glass. But…Yi? Curry?

Movement from the front reassured him. The corporal had already taken off her seatbelt, twisting around to look at him with huge, moist eyes. “You all right, Soto?” Her sharp, clear voice sawed into his raw nerves, but he managed to nod.

“ _Fuck_ ,” groaned Curry. No one disagreed with that assessment. He shifted the car into park and tried to get a look at the dash past his own deflating air bag. “What hit—”

A bone-shaking bellow made them all jump. Both enforcers drew their pistols while Isaac clapped his hands over his ears as the cry splintered into a shriek like rusty metal being rent apart. His guts twisted, the primal part of him recognizing a fellow creature in agony. A deer. There’d been a crossing sign a few miles ago. One must’ve bounded out and—

A resounding crack cut the pitiful lowing off. The echo raced off in multiple directions out into the rocks, fading into awful silence. Isaac wasn’t proficient enough to peg the caliber, but he’d spent enough time off the grid around militia and hunters to recognize the sound of a rifle.

None of them moved. As if staying utterly still would convince time to do the same. Allow them to stay, frozen, stuck, but alive. When a voice called to them, shattering their illusion, he could barely hear it over the rush of blood in his ears.

“Out of the car, all three of you. Researcher first.”


End file.
